It was a hot,humid day, and my brother Walt and I had decided that the only way to surviveit would be to go swimming in a deep swimming hole across Mr. Blickez's pasture(牧场) and through some woods.

    The onlyproblem with our plan was that this pasture was guarded by a huge, meanHereford bull. Mr. Blickez had told us that Elsie was the meanestbull in the township, maybe even the county, and we believed him. But the hotter it got, the more we thoughtthere was something fishy about his claim. For one thing, we remembered Mr. Blickez liked telling tall tales; for another, Elsie seemed like an oddname for a bull.

    Finally, Italked Mom into asking permission for us to walk through the pasture, but thenanother problem surfaced．Mom said she would talk to Mr. Blickez if we would take our cousin Joanie along with us. Joanie was almost two years older than me anda head taller. If her teasingever got around my grade school, it would be all over for me. In fact, I still had a headache from a quarrelwith her that morning.“I'm not goingswimming with that dumb girl cousin.” I told my mom.

  “Either Joaniegoes with, or you stay home alone,” Mom said in her serious tone. I gave in and we set out. On our way across the pasture, Walt yelledsuddenly. Elsie hadapproached him quietly and was licking(舔) his back. Joanie and Idove under the wire fence, but while I was on the ground I looked up and sawthat Elsie wasn't a big mean bull after all. She was going to keep licking my brother's back as long as he stoodstill.

    We had manygood days growing up and visiting our secret swimming hole guarded by theso-called “big mean bull”. And as it turned out, for a girl cousin, Joanie hasn't been too bad. She's been one of my best friends over theyears.

    As I stood in the return line and watched people, I became extremely impatient. My daughter had got four Barbie dolls and two identical Cabbage Patch Kids on Christmas, so I was eager to return toys that she didn't need. Suddenly a strong idea came to me. I eyed the lady in front of me with three small girls on her leg. The family looked poor. The children were without coats, and they had dirty faces and hair. “You are ready to get out of here, aren't you? Give her the things you want to return,” the still voice spoke. “Give them to her? These are mine. I'm not giving her my stuff,” I argued. I swallowed the urge that threatened to escape my lips when the voice spoke again. “Give her the toys.” I was familiar with the voice. I know I couldn't argue with that voice.

    I sighed and tapped the lady on the shoulder. “Ma'am,” I cleared my throat. She looked at me with kind, tired eyes surrounded by wrinkles. “Yes?” she asked. “Would your little girls like to have these toys?” I pointed to my basket full of returns. “Would your children like to have them?” She was speechless, and I swore that tears were about to well up in her eyes. “You'd be doing me a favor. I can't stand in this line in a moment longer.” “You have no idea,” she shook her head. “You have no idea what that means to me.”

    I started loading her basket as the excited girls watched. “Merry Christmas,” I said, “God bless you.” She replied as I nodded and exited the line. I didn't want to go the Walmart that day, but I went. I didn't want to give the lady my kid's toys, but I did. Sometimes doing what we don't want to do is exactly what we're supposed to do.

    One of the executives gathered at the Aspen Institute for a day-long leadership workshop using the works of Shakespeare was discussing the role of Brutus in the death of Julius Caesar. “Brutus was not an honorable man,” he said. “He was a traitor（叛徒）. And he murdered someone in cold blood.” The agreement was that Brutus had acted with cruelty when other options were available to him. He made a bad decision, they said—at least as it was presented by Shakespeare—to take the lead in murdering Julius Caesar. And though one of the executives acknowledged that Brutus had the good of the republic in mind, Caesar was nevertheless his superior. “You have to endeavor,” the executives said, “our policy is to obey the chain of command.”

    During the last few years, business executives and book writers looking for a new way to advise corporate America have been exploiting Shakespeare's wisdom for profitable ends. None more so than husband and wife team Kenneth and Carol Adelman, well-known advisers to the White House, who started up a training company called “Movers and Shakespeares”. They are amateur Shakespeare scholars and Shakespeare lovers, and they have combined their passion and their high level contacts into a management training business. They conduct between 30 and 40 workshops annually, focusing on half a dozen different plays, mostly for corporations, but also for government agencies.

    The workshops all take the same form, focusing on a single play as a kind of case study, and using individual scenes as specific lessons. In Julius Caesar , sly provocation（狡诈的挑唆） of Brutus to take up arms against the what was a basis for a discussion of methods of team building and grass roots organism.

Although neither of the Adelmans is academically trained in literature, the programmes, contain plenty of Shakespeare tradition and background. Their workshop on Henry V, for example, includes a helpful explanation of Henry's winning strategy at the Battle of Agincourt. But they do come to the text with a few biases (偏向): their reading of Henry V minimizes his misuse of power. Instead, they emphasize the story of the youth who seizes opportunity and becomes a masterful leader. And at the workshop on Caesar, Mr. Adelmans had little good to say about Brutus, saying “the noblest Roman of them all” couldn't make his mind up about things.

    Many of the participants pointed to very specific elements in the play that they felt related Caesar's pride, which led to his murder, and Brutus's mistakes in leading the  after the murder, they said, raise vital questions for anyone serving as a business when and how do you resist the boss?

    Lights out, phones on. Many teenagers reach for their smartphones or tablets at bedtime, but it may be a good idea to switch off before you hit the pillow.

    According to a study by researchers at Murdoch and Griffith Universities in Australia, using mobile devices late at night could harm teenagers' sleep and lead to an increased risk of mental health problems.

    The study was carried out on more than 1,000 Australian high school students aged between 13 and 16. It lasted four years as student participants moved from Year 8 to Year 11.

    During the study, students were asked what time of the night they received or sent text messages and phone calls, and how well they slept.

    The results are impressive. When the study started in Year 8, more than 85 percent of the students had a mobile pone and around one-third of these students never used phones after lights out. In contrast, 93 percent of Year 11 students had a mobile phone and only 22 percent of then had no late night mobile use when the study concluded four years later.

    As the levels of mobile phone use increased, there was a growth in poor sleep behavior among the students. Meanwhile, mental health problems also increased. Students in Year 8 who were more likely to use phones at night were found to have higher levels of depression (抑郁) and lower self-esteem (自尊心) one year later.

    Lynette Vernon, lead author of the study, explained that phones affect our sleep patterns because of the unnatural blue light they produce. This light could affect the level of hormones (荷尔蒙) in the body, disrupting (打乱) its balance.

     “The more you sit in bed and watch TV, play with your tablet, and play with your phone at three o'clock in the morning, the more these things affect the slow waves of your sleep pattern and give your poor quality sleep,” Mark Levi, a Sydney-based sleep doctor said.

    Based on the findings, the researchers suggested parents should focus on guiding their children's use of mobile devices.

    According to Vernon, the solution is not simply to ban teenagers from using their devices, but teach them better ways of using them

     “Back when they're aged 7 to 10, you have to be a role model. If you put your phone away at night and it doesn't go into your bedroom, it becomes normalizedin the household and you have a much easier job,” he told The Guardian.

    Native to America, the cane toad (癞蛤蟆) was introduced to Northern Queensland 70 years ago to control sugarcane beetles (甘蔗害虫). The toads failed in that duty but spread across Queensland and into neighboring northern areas.

    Now it calmly invades(侵略) the stats of Western Australia and New South Wales ( NSW). NSW wildlife experts fear the amphibians － which have poisonous backs that kill hungry predators (食肉动物) 一will have a terrible effect on native animals.

    Those fears may be about to be realized. Australia's leading government research body, the Commonwealth Science and Industry Research Organization (CSIRO), forecasts that a rise in average temperatures will make NSW an ideal living place for the cane toads.

    Tony Robinson, head of CSIRO's Wildlife, Pests, and Diseases Program, said climate change is increasing the amount of suitable living place for the cane toads.

    “With climate change, the cane toads might go down as far as Sydney and some areas of Western Australia,” Robinson said.

Recent estimates put the pace of the toads' westward march at nearly 17 miles (27 kilometers) a year and slightly slower from north to south.

    “More southerly (南部的) cities, such as Melbourne and Adelaide, would likely remain too cold and dry to ever suit the toads,” Robinson noted, “but Perth could expect cane toads in five years' time.”

    Sydney could see their arrival in the next 20 years.

    Robinson said there is no method that will keep the toads under control.

    The cane toads already cover at least half of Queensland and most of the northern country. The toads are believed to number in the billions.

    A Venezuelan virus was tried in the 1990s but had to be given up after it was found to also kill native frog species. Scientists and governmental bodies believe a national approach is needed.

    The main threat the toads cause to species such as dingoes, and crocodiles is the poison contained in glands (腺) on each of their shoulders. The poison sprays out when the toads are threatened or handled roughly. The poison is made up of 14 different chemicals.

    Cane toads also compete, and usually win, the hunt for food and living space.

    "”If the government and other states combine resources, I believe we can achieve a very practical biological-control research program,” Bums said.

Max Du emerged victorious at the Canada-Wide Science Fair with his innovative project: an unmanned aerial vehicle (UAV) designed to assist individuals experiencing cardiac arrests. His ingenuity was sparked during the Christmas recess of the preceding year. "I received a recreational drone as a gift from my parents, yet I was unable to operate it aloft due to the snowy conditions," Max recounted. "Consequently, I experimented with it indoors, which led me to contemplate the potential for a drone to serve as an automated indoor apparatus that could render assistance to people in need."

Approximately 35,000 Canadians succumb to cardiac arrests annually, with the majority of these incidents occurring beyond the confines of a hospital, resulting in a survival rate of less than 10 percent. Max was convinced that a drone could provide more expeditious assistance and expedite the delivery of vital medical treatments, but to validate this hypothesis, he was compelled to construct the device himself.

The process of refining his drone spanned a period of six months, during which Max's parents had to tolerate the persistent buzzing and crashing of the machine within their domicile. With each innovative feature he devised, such as a telescopic appendage, the drone's overall mass increased, leading to frequent disassembly. This necessitated the procurement of an entirely new set of components. Max persevered, experimenting with more lightweight construction materials until he achieved a more harmonious equilibrium in his design.

Through a methodical process of iterative refinement, the 14-year-old prodigy ultimately perfected his invention. His drone is now capable of manipulating a door handle, navigating through the air, and alighting gently on the ground. An innovative, extendable arm can be deployed to either administer an injection or deliver a life-saving pharmaceutical to a patient. Additionally, an integrated camera facilitates real-time communication with an emergency response team, enabling remote monitoring of the patient's condition.

Max is intent on pursuing the acquisition of a patent to forge alliances within the healthcare sector and bring his invention to fruition. He dedicated his summer to the study of artificial intelligence at Stanford University in California, where he was one of only 32 young scholars chosen globally. Subsequently, he will proceed to the University of Pennsylvania to enroll in a collegiate-level robotics course before resuming his high school studies in September.